Those who are last to receive health care would be the first to receive euthanasia or assisted suicide.
Women are also more likely to take part in assisted suicide or euthanasia. Of those who died with the assistance of Dr Jack Kevorkian between 1990 and 1998, 71% of the victims were women. Professor Silvia Canetto, of Colorado State University who has published extensively in the area of gender and suicide, recently stated that "the taking of one's own life tends to be seen as a masculine act, thus mercy killing appears as a more permissible way for women to commit suicide." Canetto also warns that policies, claiming to enhance autonomy, dignity and choice, may victimize more women.
The bias in medical treatment against disabled, elderly, and minorities is well documented. If, as proponents suggest, an intolerable "quality of life" can rationalize a desire to die, illnesses which may evoke a desire to die will only be made worse by factors such as disability, age, economic disadvantage, and social isolation. People in our society already most vulnerable to discrimination will have a new threat added to their lives. If policies or laws permitting assisted suicide and euthanasia were approved, they could become the only type of "medical treatment" to which certain people, those who are members of minority groups, those who are poor, or those who have disabilities, would have equal access. Their legalization would also create a sentiment that a "lesser" person's life would have to be justified. For some there will be a compulsion to commit suicide, in order to escape a life that has been made intolerable more by social conditions rather than by physical conditions. .
The inconsistencies of euthanasia and assisted suicide are overwhelming. There would be absolutely no way to regulate such laws, because each individualized case is so unique. If each person is to be examined by a doctor, then each life is in the hands of the physician's own personal opinion.
